The Boy Most Likely To

by Huntley Fitzpatrick

  After the shirt dilemma, I actually make a goddamn list, partly because my brain keeps doing this blank-out thing. Maybe there is a little shrapnel in there from deadline day.

  1. Drop off Christmas presents to Ma, Pop, Nan. This is the first year in who-the-hell-knows that I’ve actually done the present thing, so I figure whatever I give is a bonus. Picture of Cal in Santa outfit for Ma. Picture of Cal and me snapped in front of Vargas the candy-corn-attacking chicken for my sister—Cal’s screaming and Nan’s laughing nervously. Picture of Cal, Nan, and Ma for Pop, with card telling him to put it in his office. Because I’m still an asshole.

  2. Go to a meeting. Which I’ll need after this visit to my parents’ house.

  3. See Cal at Jake and Nate’s house. It’ll be fine. I’ve been there before, for Chrissake.

  4. Then home. Christmas Eve at the Garretts’. I don’t know what that even means. With luck, Alice for a sleepover? That may be pushing it, the night before Christmas, but hey.

  5. Then the next few squares of the calendar, then the next calendar, which will not be the babes on bikes one Joel left behind.

  ALICE

  I’m sort of getting a rhythm going with the whole Christmas cookie production. Okay, we’re out of some things—the semi-sweet chocolate chips I bought yesterday, for example, but flexibility is key and all that.

  I’m working on it.

  Harry comes up behind me, grabs the spoon out of the cookie batter, and slurp-licks it all over.

  “Knock it off!” is barely out of my mouth before he’s rushed to the sink, spat out the batter, and started spraying water from the sink nozzle over his tongue.

  “It’s not that bad. That’s what you get for eating raw batter!”

  “Oh barf. A hundred times barf,” Harry gasps out, wiping his tongue on a dishcloth.

  “I’m sure it’s not that bad,” Mom says from her seat at the kitchen table, where she’s trying to sew cotton balls onto a flesh-colored leotard, size 2T, because Patsy’s a sheep in this year’s church Nativity play. We had them all glued on, but Pats kept finding the costume and plucking the balls off.

  “Shorn Sheep Patsy,” Dad said cheerfully, when Mom unexpectedly lost her cool about this. “It’ll work.”

  Mom wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand. “We’re just lucky if she’s not Rabid Coyote Patsy.”

  “Grrr,” Patsy contributed.

  Now she’s butting her head against my leg saying, “Hon where?” and my cell phone is ringing (Brad—not picking up), and Duff’s tried the batter and is saying, “Is this chocolate . . . or is it excrement?” and Jase and Joel are coming in from some sort of brother-bonding workout session with that eau de sweaty boy with a splash of coffee and an undertone of bacon.

  Joel picks up one of my early cookie attempts and tosses it Frisbee-style at Jase. “Think fast.”

  But Jase is checking his phone and it hits him in the chest and bounces off.

  “Penalty! Now you have to eat it.” That’s Duff, singsong.

  “Hysterical, all of you,” I say. “I’m going for a run. Make your own damn cookies.”

  TIM

  At Ma and Pop’s front door, ever festively decked out for Christmas with a herd of stuffed reindeer heads. Just the heads, mind you, mounted on the door, with these shiny black eyes and stuffed white antlers. Like Rudolph’s revenge: The Christmas all of the other reindeer finally got what was coming to them.

  Crack my knuckles, knock, only a second before I’m swept in by Hurricane Ma.

  “Goodness! Don’t be shivering out there—but for heaven’s sake use the mat and don’t tramp snow all over the good carpet.”

  Awkward doesn’t begin to cover the five minutes I’m there, in this room with its shiny-mirror lake, open-mouthed Christmas Chorus Dolls that actually look as though they’re screaming, not singing. And more pinned all over the tree.

  Ma shouts, “Nanette!” and Nan comes on in—with Troy—from the kitchen, where they were, apparently, baking brownies, because why the hell not.

  “For non-pharmaceutical use only, man.”

  Shoulders braced, fire pit back in my stomach, waiting for Ma, for Nan, to ask, or say, anything about Cal or his new parents. But they don’t. Nan’s hug is a little on the Heimlich maneuver side, and Ma pretty much has an aneurysm about a rip on the shoulder of my parka, but other than that, no dramarama and I’m nearly out the friggin’ door and—

  “Your father wants you in his study.”

  Fuck.

  The thing is, I can just . . . not go. You can choose where your feet take you, man. That’s Dominic again, who’s like my own little Jiminy Cricket, Portuguese fisherman style.

  But I go. Because, whatever.

  The more things change . . .

  Pictures restored to the desk, no snails in tank though (!), Pop doing a cell-phone check. It’s like that stopwatch he clicked on back in August, ticking to D-day, cryogenically froze the whole exhibit.

  “Yo, Pop,” I say, not sitting down on the couch. “Merry Christmas.”

  He puts down the phone, lowers his palm, the “sit” gesture for dogs.

  Do I get a treat if I do? Can already feel Bastard Tim creeping in, running through my bloodstream.

  For the first time, I notice that the size of his chair positions him automatically higher than anyone on the couch. Plant myself there anyway, arms outspread along the top, ankle crossed over knee.

  Fine. Pop can win the Great and Powerful contest.

  He clears his throat.

  I clear mine. Run my finger around the inside of my collar.

  Neither of us says a thing for a sec. He picks up a pen, initials something, then drums the end of the pen against the chair arm.

  Tap. Tap tap tap. Tap.

  “You’ve done what you needed to do,” he says after the requisite eon.

  Pop has to be the one to mention Cal?

  “The college fund stays in your name. I’ll keep paying your health and car insurance. The allowance ends, because you’re eighteen now, but the others are yours. To keep. Merry Christmas.”

  I’m rising before he’s even finished, right when he says “ends,” and step up close to the chair. A flash in his eyes—alarm, maybe.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  That earns me a swivel of the chair to put the phone down.

  “But, I’m set. Nano can have my share to help with Columbia, if she gets in. ‘Roar, Lion, Roar.’ Merry Christmas.”

  “I thought you were done making rash decisions, Tim.”

  Now I’m out the office door and he’s trailing me, even after I call bye to Ma and Nan—and Troy—and hit the front steps.

  Snow coming down, again, the wet kind that clings to your clothes and hardens, there’s this whisk of wind, and flakes blow down my collar. The trees shake, and glops of snow splat onto the street. The piles on the sides of the road are already that dirty-brown-sugar shade.

  I turn to face Pop just as he skids on a patch of ice. Grab his hand to balance him. His fingers splay out, like he’s still falling instead of holding on. He gets his balance back, reaches into his blazer pocket. For the cell phone? Fifty bucks? But his hand comes out empty, and he looks at it for a second, while I slide into the car, buckle up.

  “Buy Nan a college education, Pop. Buy Ma a milkshake.”

  So, yeah, we’re being given our privacy, even though no one calls it that. Jake has to stir something on the stove and his partner, Nate, is on call and must return a message or two. So it’s Cal and me, me and Cal, in the living room with the big-ass Christmas tree and the menorah and glass-fronted case in the corner full of worn baseballs and old-style gloves.

  As Jake leaves the room, he glances at me, then puts Cal into this saucer-type thing instead of into my arms. Maybe giving Cal back after being on the other side of the hand-off is also hard. Already hard.

  Cal fists and unfists his hands, arms out, his “pick me up” thing, says, “Bob!”

  “Already for
gotten my name, huh?”

  His nose looks better, bruise still there. He’s wearing this new outfit, like jeans and a button-down shirt, which has this big drool-oval on it. No socks, though. They’re lying like roadkill near the couch. Still likes to get as naked as possible, this kid.

  Sure enough, now he’s trying to stuff the collar of his shirt into his mouth. I pull it out and he clamps down on my thumb with his two sharp bottom teeth. When I pull it away, he goes for my nose, chomps. “Yow, Cal.”

  “Bob,” he says, muffled, because his mouth is full of nose.

  Maybe that’s his new name.

  None of my business.

  Right?

  I fucking hated the name Calvin from the get-go. Now I want to tattoo it on the kid’s arm so it will stay, stay, stay.

  Time to go.

  So I call to Jake and he comes out of the kitchen looking disheveled and pissed off.

  I automatically apologize for whatever the hell I’ve done. He shakes his head, smiling at the floor, then at me. “What, you think I’ll make you run ten times around the track the way I did when you were a mouthy middle-schooler?”

  That would be easier.

  Turns out he’s all bent out of shape because Nate baby-proofed the burners and Jake can’t figure out how to turn them on.

  I kiss Cal on top of his red, fluffy head, do a swift chin-swipe drool-off with the bottom of my shirt, and hand him over like Hester used to, all speedy like he’s scorching my hands, and beat it out the door with Jake trailing behind like Pop, but not.

  Say the Merry Christmas thing, thank-you-for-letting-me-visit, and don’t ask what they’re planning to call the kid.

  And then Jake asks me that very question.

  “I’m, uh, fine with Calvin. Actually.”

  Weird look from Jake, and it turns out that the question was what do I want Cal to call me.

  “Uncle Tim? Just plain Tim?” he offers.

  “Whatever works, as long as it’s not Bad Example Don’t-Be-Like-Tim.”

  “As long as it’s not Wait, Who’s Tim?” Jake corrects, and pulls me in for a half hug, and I let him.

  “Waiting for someone?” I ask around a grape Tootsie Pop—my latest addiction.

  Alice flushes, sweaty at the temples, hot as hell in black ski-type pants. “Just”—pant—“shoveling.” Halfway up one side of the driveway, she’s left a cleared path, although the Bug is a hump of snow, and the van has all its scrapes and dings frosted away.

  She bites the thumb of her mitten, pulling it off, wades through the snow and takes me around the elbows, looking me in the eye.

  “So? Cal? You? Jake and Nate? How’d it go?”

  Just shoveling, my ass.

  I wonder how long she’s been out here. Her eyelashes are frosted, her lips look chapped, and she’s already cleared the path to the garage steps.

  Oh, Alice.

  I pop the pop out of my mouth. “Well, you know. It was touching. Poignant. We all wept. Cal had made me a homemade present, since Christmas was coming. It was a used diaper, but you know, it’s the thought that counts. Jake and Nate and I all gathered around the booze-free Wassail Bowl and sang ‘What Child is This?’ or, no, ‘Whose Child is This?’ And then—”

  She puts two cold fingers over my lips. “Tim. C’mon.”

  I shrug. It’s snowing kinda hard again, and snow’s piling up on her white knit hat and the shoulders of her bright red parka, her nose a little pink. Alice in Wonderland, winter style. We should go inside and warm up—something to look forward to—but instead I shove my hands into my pockets, stamp snow off my boots, then try to wrestle her for the shovel—

  “Tim!”

  “Yeah, Cal has this awesome room—huge—and Jake and Nate are all jazzed, and there are eight million presents under the tree, and since the last stuffed animal I bought for the kid turned out to be a dog toy, he’s coming out way the hell ahead. The whole house is already kid-proofed and shit, and all’s well that ends well or whatever.” I bend, shovel some snow, manage to toss a few loads of it to the side before Alice puts one foot on it and slides her re-mittened hand up my shoulder to where my pulse jumps in my neck.

  “That all sounds great. Can I have the no-bullshit translation now? Or do I need to get the talking stick?”

  “Same moral. He’s in a good place. It’s the Right Thing.”

  “And?”

  “And it’s going to suck. For a while. I’ll live. Got a lot to live for, Hot Alice.”

  At some point, I’ll need to tell Alice more. About the college money, and that I’m basically broke now. But of all the “challenges” we face, I don’t think there being no chance of my being her sugar daddy is going to be one of them.

  So, yeah, I trail after her toward the Garretts’ house. I can see Patsy at the door, her breath making this little circle on the glass, her hands—bigger starfish than Cal’s—plastered against it.

  Christmas Eve at the Garretts’. Like I said, I don’t know what that means.

  Not Ma’s special whiskey-spiked eggnog, dinner at the club, that weird a cappela group that always sings there, Nan’s tense white face, some chick in green velvet that I run into and try to charm out of her pants on my way to the punchbowl or the head.

  And an evening I mostly don’t remember.

  Things will be different tonight.

  Because of the previews I’ve already had this winter, I know about some things—the fire, well-built because Jase built it and he’s like a freaking architect with the logs. That popping sound when sparks fly out. Hot cocoa and cider. Alice in blue pajamas and this fuzzy robe that manages to be just . . . lovely on her. Harry and Duff, who have gone around with their faces red and white and sticky for the last week, candy cane junkies on a bender. That wet-dog mitten smell from wool stuff drying in front of the fire. Mr. Garrett reading these stories and doing all the voices, even if he skips huge parts that might possibly scare George.

  Those other times I’ve sat in front of the fire at the Garretts’, I’ve had Cal, and spent most of my time negotiating lap space with Patsy, and trying to make sure the kid didn’t eat a popcorn kernel or get too close to the fire. It’ll be different tonight.

  They have to have a double row of stockings to fit everyone. There’s one for me too. One for Cal. We weren’t sure the adoption would come off before Christmas.

  But I have a feeling there would have been one there for him anyway.

  Yeah, so—nothing gets lost. Cal isn’t, and not just because he’ll still be a little part of my life. I get to carry him with me, the way you do all your memories and mistakes. He started out a mistake I had no memory of, and he wound up being, well, my kid.

  Maybe thinking any one person can show up and give you all you need is as much of a delusion as thinking you can find truth in a bottle. Maybe you can just find what you need in little pieces, in people who show up for one crucial moment—or a whole chain of them—even if they can’t solve it all. Maybe this is the secret of big families, like the Garretts . . . and like AA. People’s strengths can take their turn. There can be more of us than there is trouble.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Every day I find more people to thank in this writing life of mine. Every letter I get from a reader, notice from a blogger, comment or question from a librarian—my gratitude is boundless. There is no way I would be here, and enjoying it so much, without the time and effort and kindness of all of you.

  All of you—starting with my erudite, extraordinary editor, Jessica Dandino Garrison, who always knows what I, or my characters, love scenes, and books themselves, need before I do, and stands ready with adjectives, plot ideas, exclamations, questions—and cupcakes. Her contributions go far beyond the call of duty—she’s invaluable.

  And Penguin Random House in general, a mighty army at my back—Lauri Hornik, Namrata Tripathi, Dana Chidiac, Jasmin Rubero, Maya Tatsukawa, Lily Malcom, Kristen Tozzo, the awesome Tara Shanahan, and truly everyone in Sales, Marketing, Design
, Managing Editorial, Production, and Sub Rights who has a hand in the life of these books. The careful, cautious, and kind Regina Castillo. The talented Theresa Evangelista. So many magicians behind the scene.

  Christina Hogrebe—my agent/miracle worker/thoughtful critic/judicious story and business advisor and friend of the bosom to both me and the books. You have been, from the start, one of the best and brightest and most amazing of all my lucky breaks. Thanks are inadequate. Gratitude = endless.

  The rest of the JRA team—most especially Andrea Cirillo, Meg Ruley, Rebecca Sherer, Jessica Errera, and Jane Berkey.

  A huge shout-out to all the friends of Tim, who believed in this story and this boy from the get-go—my peerless Plotmonkeys: Shaunee Cole, Jennifer Iszkiewicz, Karen Pinco, and Kristan Higgins. Yes, the fabulous KH, as remarkable a friend as she is a writer—generous beyond words with her time and kindness, ever willing to crawl into the trenches with me, Tim, and Alice, and drag the good stuff out.

  Heartfelt and hearty thanks to Deb Caletti, Trish Doller, Jennifer Echols, and (again) Kristan Higgins for their kind, kind comments about this book.

  Friends near and far who read, listened, and supplied car suggestions, medical details, “guy” translations—particularly Alicia Thomas, whose cut-to-the core critiques made this a better book. Huge thanks to Kim and Mark Smith, Paula and Roy Kuphal, the mighty awesome Apocalypsies, and the FTHRWA critique group, particularly Ana Morgan, Amy Villalba, and the late Ginny Lester.

  Of course, always, my father, my brother Ted, Leslie and Grace Funsten. Colette Corry—who spent endless hours with me and Tim. Tina Squire, friend of a lifetime.

  Brian Ford—once my teacher, now my friend and fellow writer, funny, acerbic, generous and wise with his comments, critiques, and questions—who never failed to say “show it to me” when I struggled over a scene, and spent almost as much time in that tent as the characters and I.